September was a big month for European seed investments. 238 companies announced seed funding: the highest figure for the past few months — and the real figure is probably slightly bigger because of the reporting lag.

Catching up on 2020

Europe’s seed-stage companies brought in €421m in funding last month. It means the total amount of money raised by seed-stage companies so far this year has reached €2.5bn — close to 2020’s €2.9bn total. 

That said, 2020 was a bad year for seed investment. The total raised has been on the decline each year since 2018, as have the number of rounds secured each year. 

Fintech

Out of the 238 companies that secured seed funding in September, 41 of them are fintech businesses. That’s in line with trends seen in the last few months too.

The biggest seed round raise of the month was also a fintech company: Vyne, a British startup that raised $15.5m.

The second largest was Focused Energy, a laser fusion startup from Germany that raised $15m. 

Like previous months, the UK saw the most seed investment. €155m was channelled into British seed-stage startups, and a total of 78 companies from the country raised funds. 

The next highest was Spain, with 29, and Germany with 25.

Here are some of the most interesting rounds this month.

Fintech

• September’s largest round: Vyne. The London-based startup secured its $15.5m from investors including Hearst Ventures, Entrée Capital, Triplepoint, Seedcamp, Venrex, Founder Collective and Partech. Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla and CEO of Cazoo, joined as an angel investor. 

• Insurtech is on fire. GetLife, a Spanish life insurance startup, raised €1m in pre-seed funding. It was backed by angel investor Chris Adelsbach, who has previously backed Marshmallow, Railsbank and Atom Bank.
• Another insurance platform, British startup Anansi, raised £1.5m. It’s focused on insurance for goods in transit — a need that has gone up significantly in the ecommerce boom.

Space and air

• Based in Espoo in Finland, Aurora Propulsion Technologies raised a €1.7m seed round, led by Lithuanian VC Practica Capital. It’s working on spacecraft propulsion tech, especially important as space gets more crowded with satellites. 
• Aeroclass, an aviation learning platform, raised $1.2m in new funding from AeroCity Tech Ventures — a VC dedicated to aviation tech. The startup, from Lithuania, says it’s the first learning platform in the world dedicated to aviation.

Social

• Lapse, a London-based startup that’s developed a disposable camera app, raised €1.2m in new funding, led by Speedinvest. The app allows groups of friends to take a roll of pictures that are then revealed 24 hours later, aiming to recreate using an analogue camera. 

• Tickitto, a company that helps people buy tickets for events — particularly focused on events whilst travelling — raised €3.8m, backed by Seedcamp.

Sustainability

• Climatiq, which helps companies to track their carbon footprint, raised $2m in a seed round led by Cherry Ventures. Sifted’s Sarah Drumm spoke to Climatiq CEO Hessam Lavi, who said tracking a company’s carbon footprints should be as easy as using Wikipedia.

• Cheesecake Energy, a green energy storage startup from the UK, raised £1m in seed funding. It was led by Imperial College’s Innovation Fund, which is now on its second investment fund.

Health

• LGBTQ+ sexual health platform Lvndr raised £1.5m in a seed round led by Octopus Ventures. We chatted to the founders about why tech needs to work to help the LGBTQ+ community.

• Toothfairy, a dental app that allows remote diagnosis and treatment of patients, raised £3m in seed funding, led by Ada Ventures and Slingshot. The company, based in the UK, says it wants to help the coronavirus-induced dental crisis, where 19m appointments were missed.

Food

• Bairro, a Portuguese startup which runs an app where customers can order supermarket food, raised €1.2m in a round led by a number of private investors. 
• Stockholm-based Lunch.Co, a food marketplace startup, raised €500k in a round led by Swedish VC VEQ. The company’s app allows colleagues to share their home-cooked meals with each other at work.

Freya Pratty is Sifted’s news reporter. She tweets from @FPratty.